The plea could be faintly heard 19 floors above, where Gangster Disciples leader Larry Hoover is on trial in U.S. District Court.

As his narcotics and conspiracy trial entered its second week Monday, hundreds of people demonstrated for Hoover's release. The protesters believe Hoover, who has been in state prison since a 1973 murder conviction, is a political captive.

Wallace "Gator" Bradley, a Hoover confidant, said the protest was "about a fair trial for Larry Hoover and the 39," a reference to a long list of alleged Gangster Disciple leaders and associates indicted in 1995 on federal narcotics charges.

Bradley renewed allegations that the charges against Hoover are politically motivated. Hoover's supporters said he deserves to be freed because he has turned the Gangster Disciples into a politically active group that calls itself Growth and Development.

Near the end of the noon-hour protest, a large group of young men cheered loudly as they circled the post office across the street from the courthouse. The demonstration, which was peaceful, was watched by more than 80 police officers on foot, bicycle and horseback.

Several more Hoover supporters, wearing lapel pins stamped with his photograph, were seated in the courtroom. Although Hoover didn't speak Monday, the sound of his voice was heard nearly all day on surveillance tapes filled with expletives.

On a tape made Nov. 6, 1993, during a conversation at the Vienna Correctional Center, Hoover and Gregory Shell, who also is on trial, reminisced about their pasts.

The conversation took them back to 1967, when Hoover and Shell were standing in a crowded church near 64th Street and Dorchester Avenue as gang leader Jeff Fort walked through his group.

"The church was getting quiet. You could hear a pin drop when he was walking through the aisles," Hoover told Shell. "So I told myself ah . . . I can have me a mob like that."

Hoover and Shell were seated near one another Monday as prosecutors played the recording. The defendants, the jurors and U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber listened to the recording through black headphones.

A series of conversations involving gang leaders at Vienna were taped using microphones planted by authorities in the badges that visitors must wear at the facility. Also played in court Monday were several taped telephone calls among gang leaders in which drug-dealing strategies were allegedly discussed.

The recordings are key pieces of evidence in the trial and were breakthroughs in a long drug-conspiracy investigation. Prosecutors say the conversations prove that Hoover continued to direct gang activity from the Vienna Correctional Center.

Outside the courtroom, Hoover supporters said the conversations were taped illegally and should not be used in the trial.

Bradley said the bugging was improperly authorized by the chief federal judge in Chicago.

"Lock up any individual who breaks the law, but the government doesn't have the right to break the law," Bradley said.

In one conversation aired in court, Hoover warned Shell that authorities would likely try to tap gang members' conversations. Even so, the two kept talking.

"All they looking for is a place where they can monitor your movements," Hoover said, his voice barely audible over loud background noises in the prison visiting room. "Yeah, ain't nobody talkin' 'bout nothing, nothing subversive, nothing covert, you know."